To the authors; not everyone knows what 'hold down' means, nor that there will be a flyout to then choose a different tool. These help files presume certain knowledge, which can be confusing if you are trying to find help on how to find the gradient tool.

This is a good point. All documentation from Adobe should assume the user has no knowledge of how the app works, or how windows work. The latter basic knowledge should be assumed since they were able to get to the document to read it.

So that sentence should read.

(If the gradient tool is not visible, place the mouse cursor over the paint bucket tool in the tool bar at the left side of the screen and hold down the left mouse button until you see the gradient tool.

Just a thought, but the added text could be visible if the user clicks on it or hovers over it. Making the sentence shorter for those who do have a basic understanding of windows and photoshop.

I can remember being confused over the little Cog icon when the CS6 beta came out, and being told it was a kind of default for 'Options' nowadays. It wasn't a default for me, but I guess everyone has to do a lot of learning when being introduced to a new application.

I have been writing about Picasa, Pixlr, and the Gimp, for the sake of Camera Club members who baulk at spending the cost of a first class lens on an image editing program, and I have no experience with any of them. The Gimp was easy enough to use without needing to RTFM, but Picasa — which is the simplest of the three — had me delving into the Help pages for nothing more complex than resizing an image!

you folks @ adobe make it real hard for someone to learn how to use your package from scratch - and this despite your pretty web-site and cloud. i can see you're trying, but your solution is fundamentally flawed.

Actually finding any kind of tutorial or lesson in general that does not pre-suppose existing knowledge is nearly impossible. What is the point in having this amazing resource without there being a front door in?

Basic tutorials would be the front door - and it is from the basic learning that one gets to understand what it is that one does not know. Simply put: the basic lessons will serve to teach you what questions you need to ask next . . . this is common teaching practice, guys. Not complicated at all.

So how bout a comprehensive beginners tutorial included with the package, and the usual internet resources for advanced lessons/techniques etc...??? (for newbies and for folks like me who have had to learn it in bits on the fly, and would now like to fill in the massive gaps my half-a$$ed education has left me with)...

Honestly: for the price one pays for this package, (which is truly exhorbitant if you are a private individual) one would expect easy to use documentation that i do not have to spend yet more money to access because it is on the internet - which is not cheap where i come from....

Agree with the above. I've dabbled with various versions of Photoshop for years, and once knew how to place a gradient border all around an image that varied opacity from 100 to 0. I've forgotten how since I haven't been using Photoshop in a while. It's not difficult; I simply forgot how to do it.

I just wasted several hours attempting to use the "Help" provided inside Photoshop CS5 Extended, and it's an exercise in frustration, to be charitable. The program used to include a detailed "Help" facility that included categorized information about how to do pretty much everything it can do. Now, they just kick you out on the web and you're on your own. This is completely unacceptable for such a high-end product.

For an application that holds itself out to the world as THE ultimate and THE industry standard for digital image manipulation and editing, not including documentation on how to use its capabilities WITH the program is beyond comprehension.